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Three young men dressed in combat gear carrying what appeared to be dangerous weapons scared locals on a Munich bus at the weekend, but their intentions were far from violent.

Three friends in their early twenties were on their way to a cosplay - short for costume play - event on Saturday morning when their appearance shocked fellow passengers, local police reported.

Cosplay is a role-playing activity where people dress up as characters from video games, comic books, movies and other pop culture fandoms.

But the young men perhaps picked the wrong kind of costumes for the moment, dressing in camouflage with munitions vests and carrying airsoft guns (replicas that fire plastic pellets).

Passersby saw one of the men boarding a bus and, frightened by their outfits and weapons, called the police, Munich police reported.

Fifteen police cars were sent out on a search for the bus, sending out a message to all bus drivers, according to Munich's Abendzeitung. On hearing the call, the bus driver carrying the three friends reported their presence in his vehicle to police.

Twenty officers then pulled over the bus and climbed on board, only to find that the weapons the trio were carrying in their bag were the harmless airsoft guns.

They also had two pocket knives with them, which were confiscated along with the guns.

Police said the three were released after being charged for violating weapons regulations by carrying the knives.

"The whole ordeal is absurd," one of the friends, Patrik M., told the Abendzeitung. "You can't dress up like in Carnival anymore."

Patrik also told Bild that he had dressed in this costume dozens of times before for other cosplay events and had never caused alarm, speculating that concerns about Isis in the wake of the Paris attacks have made people more fearful.